Abstract

Covalent organic frameworks, COFs, and their derived sub-groups based on auto-assembly of exclusivelyaromatic units, PAFs, are emerging into the advanced materials field due to their high free porous volume,structural regularity, robustness, hydrothermal stability, and functional variety. They present high gasuptake capacities and presence of stabilized active functions in the framework. This together with chargedlow-density structures combined with their organization through -conjugated system arrays, open thepossibilities of COFs and PAFs to be used as effective materials for adsorption, selective separation andcatalysis, and in nanotechnological applications. This review will be focused on self-assembly synthesis mechanisms, physico-chemical characteristics, and applications of this class of promising covalent porousorganic structures, out looking their possible future approaches and perspectives.